How it's made: Braavos

{Taelar POV}

After Raven- no, after master left, I continued the work we had been doing, giving death to those who were desperate for it. But I knew this wasn't going to work long-term. He had told me as much.

"Listen here you dumb shit, you can't go on killing every slave you come across who is desperate. A few hundred missing slaves wouldn't be much to the Valyrians with millions of other slaves working these mines. But once you reach a few hundred, it'd be hard to be not noticed." He had advised me one day when I went out without telling him to give the gift to those in need.

Of course, he didn't miss the chance to mock our captors, "Unless they are too dumb or too arrogant but I don't put it past the dragon lords with their weapons of mass destruction. But those smaller houses have their own stakes in the mines too, and they might notice sooner."

In preparation for the inevitable, I have started to gather a few like-minded people. Fifty-four of them to be exact, all new slaves brought in recently and those who are on the verge of breaking down and giving up hope completely.

"The easiest to mold and guide are the people who have lost everything, even hope. They have nothing to lose and as long as you shine a tiny bit of light of hope in front of them, the loyalty you get surpasses any knight and their crap honor." I remembered him telling me in one of his stories of a fallen empire.

After I finish training them, the fifty-five of us will be the order of the faceless men, priests of the faceless god, death incarnate himself. We give the gift of death to those who seek to embrace its mercy.

But we are not bloodthirsty, we don't go around killing people. We don't pick or choose whom to give this mercy to. Every death comes at a price. I was taught so.

"Never kill anyone for free. You are an assassin, every life you take should have an equivalent price. An assassin must be cool, always hidden in the shadows, killing when the price is right and disappearing right after. Oh! You should probably have some symbol too, like the coins of John Wick!" my master had once sleepily ranted about the ways of assassins.

I have remembered and learned everything from him, even the sorcery I'm not proficient at. Some of the fifty-five have already started to pick up on it. Just a while longer, and we will get out of this hell!

**********************

{Third POV}

Goran, also known as Goran the whoremonger by his friends, is a simple man. He does his duty of guarding his masters' mines as a dutiful guard, gets off his shift to find some new prostitute, and the next day he is back on his post.

There wasn't much he could ask for in life. He lived blissfully, repeating the same routine every day. At least that was supposed to be the case. But today, the cycle was broken.

In the section of mines, Goran and his fellow guards were guarding and supervising, he felt something was amiss. He truly regretted fucking the girl named Unlucky Lora last night.

Legends were that every guy who fucked her would find themselves in misfortune. He had stupidly taken up the challenge. And now he couldn't shake off the eerie feeling of something creeping up on him. He felt like he should know what it is.

And then he saw it. And heard it. It was death.

Screams started all around him as he heard the guard next to him fall to the ground. And then, a pickaxe slowly enlarged in front of his eyes before he could do anything. From seeing the pointy end of the axe to it going through his eyes didn't take much time.

He only heard a faint sound before he collapsed, "…ar Morghulis!"

*Shiik*

A hand grabbed the pickaxe and pulled it out along with all the brain matter, blood, eye, and other disgusting bits.

Taelar commanded, "Clean up fast. The others should be done too. After we gather all the slaves, we make a run for it in all directions, blending into the crowd."

The plan had been simple. It had to be with all the variables out of their control. They would free as many slaves as possible in a short time, and kill their way out leading the slaves. And finally, scatter amongst the slaves to disappear from Valyria

The plan was banking on the complacency and arrogance of the Valyrian Lords after centuries of not having any opposition. And by the looks of it, it seemed to be working.

Although the guards were well-equipped, there was no vigilance in them, Taelar doubted if a majority of them could even fight properly. If not for the dragons and the sorcery, he believed the slave revolts of the past would have already overthrown the valyrians.

Anyway, there wasn't much time left to waste. They had to continue moving forward toward the next checkpoint. Good thing they fished for information ahead of time using the face of a guard they killed.

"Information is key to an assassin or anyone really." He replayed his master's voice in his mind while walking forward.

********************

At the mouth of one of the mines under the 13th valyrian volcano, a swarm of slaves rushed out. The squinted eyes at the glaring sunlight they so missed couldn't hide their joy. The warm sunlight seemed to be thawing out their long-lost emotions.

While some were reveling at seeing the sky for the first time, a few dozen among them wearing eye patches and holding many weapons had already engaged with the nearby guards.

Pickaxes were flying everywhere. Crude daggers, stones, and all manners of weapons were used to kill the guards. They didn't have much time before the dragon riders were notified.

"Freedom is just ahead, kill your way through and scatter around! They can't capture us all!" Taelar shouted at the thousands of slaves behind him. He estimated there to be at least two thousand of them. Maybe more.

Fired up by the rousing voice, some who sought vengeance lunged at the guards, disregarding their lives. Many fled in any direction they could find, mostly away from the Valyrian freehold. Taelar carried the armor he picked from one of the soldiers and ran with the crowd as well.

After running for a while, Taelar slipped away and hid away from the crowd, alone in a rock formation that he found to be inconspicuous. And there he hid for a long time. During that time, he heard dragon roars and screams.

He could smell the burning flesh and smoke wafting through the air. Sometimes he could even hear the voices of the soldiers cursing as they passed by the rock. But through it all, he remained hidden.

They had planned to escape in the dead of night, but they had miscalculated and had come out just before sunset. So there was a higher casualty, and he had to wait for nightfall. An assassin thrives in darkness.

*********************

After many hours, in a dark corner of a port in the Valyrian Freehold, a group of more than a dozen men were hiding and carefully observing a slave ship being loaded.

"Only 16 of us made it here then. We shall wait for the others for a while longer and then board that ship disguised as slaves. When we are out on the waters far enough from the dragons, we take control of the ship and escape." Taelar spoke as the leader of the group.

*********************

It had been a few moons ago when the slaver ships had reached one of the islands within the Basilisk Isles. That was when the faceless men decided to act, as there was no way for them to attack the other two ships on the water earlier.

They hadn't been prepared for two more ships to follow the one they decided to hide on, which led to the predicament. But they quickly decided to act when they make landfall so that they could easily kill all the valyrian soldiers who would be busy and scattered while supervising the slaves.

However, the plans had to change once again when they found out that the ship was heading for the terrifying continent of Sothoryos. Almost every kid on the coasts of Essos had heard of the horrors of that place. Wyverns, Basilisks, Cannibals, and other terrifying creatures supposedly roam those lands.

And the valyrians wanted to use the slaves to establish a colony in that godforsaken place. All the slaves on the ship were good at some trade, craftsmen, ship builders, carpenters, blacksmiths, merchants, and more.

The faceless men acted quickly, rallying the slaves using the fear of the horrors of Sothoryos. When the ships docked at the ports of the island in Basilisk Isles, a few faceless men boarded the other two ships and laid in wait.

In the dead of night, the next day of the travels through the Isles, they acted. All three ships had a revolt led by the faceless men and with some losses, they managed to take over the ships. Now the question was where would they go?

The valyrians with their dragons had their net cased far and wide. There were free cities that worked under the orders of the Valyrian Empire along with multiple outposts and colonies all around Essos.

And that is when a group of moon singers, the priestesses from the Land of Jogos Nhai, stepped up. Apparently, they were captured as slaves while going out to preach or something. Didn't matter how, anyone other than the Valyrians could end up as slaves in Essos one way or another.

The moon singers had the gift of prophecy and with a bit of sacrificing the valeryian soldiers, they had an answer. There was a lagoon hidden within fog at the very north-western tip of Essos. If they reached there somehow, they could remain hidden and develop their own power.

And so they did, the slaves took control of the ship and moved towards the lagoon, staying as far as they could from the 'free cities' of Valeriya like Myr, Tyrosh, and Pentos and finally they reached their destination after many moons of hardships.

In the foggy lagoon they decided to call Braavos, they remained hidden from the dragon riders while developing their own city and culture. It helped that Taelar and his faceless men knew some sorcery so that their hiding spot wouldn't be found anytime soon.

Taelar and a few dozen other main founding members of Braavos decided that as a city established by slaves, their city would abolish slavery in all forms. They would truly be a free city where all could pursue their interests.

The faceless men established their own guild here calling it the house of black and white. And the few merchants and fugitives took their valuables and stored in an abandoned iron mine.

Later upon the suggestion of Taelar, who had learned about banking from his master's ramblings, Iron Bank was established. This further helped the many different masters of crafts that had come as slaves to Braavos and kick-started one of the richest economies the world of Planetos had ever seen.

--------------------------------------------------

The world only got to know about the grand city hidden somewhere known as Braavos after more than 100 years of its establishment. Thereafter, the Braavosi continued to amass their armada and riches while trading with the world.

During the same time in the shady parts of the world, whispers started to speak of a strange order of assassins who could take the life of anyone, given the right price.

After a few more centuries when the Braavosi were finally revealed to the world, they were already a large powerhouse with many trading partners, debtors, and allies. And they also had the faceless men, who by then had been revered as the best assassins in all of Westeros and Essos.

The faceless men and the faceless god were revered and worshipped by all of Braavos. So much so that it was said that if a faceless man gives a special iron coin to any man of Braavos and says valar morghulis, that Braavosi will obey him, responding with valar dohaeris.

Despite Taelar's best efforts, the cult of the faceless men was just that, a cult. So the later generations ended up making it a religion widely popular in Braavos and all over the world. The lack of written doctrines didn't help the cause when the cultish dogma passed through generations.

Although legends speak of an incident when the Titan of Braavos had just been revealed to the world, there had been one man who came to the doors of the House of Black and White and smashed the doors into pieces.

Nobody knows the veracity of this claim or anything about the man. But right after the doors broke, a beggar near the area was recorded to have heard the words, "I told that bastard not to make it a religion! What faceless god? What bullshit is this?!"